Interest for a source code analyser/processor

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2012
#1

I am posting this to gauge interest in a tool to help those who are not well versed in the art of java 4k programming.

The tool is percieved to act in two modes:

  1. Analyse your source code and provide suggestions on how to remove any inefficencies that exist in the source. In this mode, your source code is not modified at all and the tool is used to help a developer learn how to optimise the source code.

  2. Process your source code automatically and produce “optimised” source code as output. It is percieved that the tool in this mode would be the first in the chain of the build steps i.e. source -> optimised_source -> compile to bytecode -> riven’s Compile -n- Shrink.

The goals of this tool would be to :

  • reduce the time taken to perform lower level optimisation.
  • allow the developer to keep working on a non-optmised, non-brittle, well formed and easily developable/maintainable version of the game.
  • lower any percieved barrier of entry due to low-level optmisations.

This will probably be a reasonablly involved project so before i start i would like to make sure that it would be used :stuck_out_tongue:

#2

I believe this project will be very helpful to those who have never extremely optimized their code for a 4K game before so this should be appreciated by all :slight_smile:

#3

I would very much enjoy a tool like this. I’ve often been tempted to do a 4k entry but it is so foreign to the way I code now I’ve been too afraid.

#4

If you want it to really be optimised it should try a scattergun approach (as Riven’s shrinker already does). The effect of a small change once you’ve gone through the various munging steps is very unpredictable. I use static final booleans and a script which tries all combinations of true/false for them to see which version is smallest, but add in more than a few and it really takes a while to compile.

#5

yes, i also found similar behaviour a few years back when working on the J4KO tool.

This tool will not produce the best space optimised (after compilation and compression) code when compare to hand crafting, however it will probably be “good” enough to lower the barrier of entry so that people who are not, able or willing to do the hand crafting are not turned off entering.

#6

More tools are ALWAYS better. I think Riven’s tool is one of the best things that has happened to this competition.

I would suggest trying to lower the barrier to entry to using your tool, once it’s completed. If you can get a website up that allows users to paste in their source code, as in Riven’s tool, that will help a lot of users who could be scared off by installing files.

I would certainly use such a tool, but I don’t think it would be compatible with the black magic I’m using this year.